1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for more effectively managing digital images of a mobile terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile communication systems were initially developed to support voice communication services, to provide user convenience during mobility and allow device portability. But as mobile communication technologies continue to develop, transferring of multimedia data (such as photos, video clips, etc. combined with audio data) via Internet access also has now become available in addition to simple voice communication services.
Also, as image capturing functions, such as those provided by a camera module, are implemented into mobile terminals, image processing and management of stored image files are necessary.
However, images that are typically stored in the related art mobile terminal are simply managed in a one-dimensional manner. Namely, images are stored in the form of digital files having a date or file name associated thereto, which allows image searching by date or by file name. As digital image capturing technology improves and as storage memory becomes cheaper, users can be more easily take digital photographs (or video clips) and a large number of digital image files may exist in storage. Thus, if there are numerous digital image files stored in memory or for digital image files that have been stored by the user some time ago, the user can not easily remember the details about each image that was captured, and it may be difficult to determine where particular images are stored. As such, there are difficulties in effectively managing countless digital image files.
In addition, the user can only view the stored digital image files in a sequential manner through the related art user interface, such as a thumbnail-type viewing function, a preview function, or the like. Thus, user convenience is not sufficiently taken into consideration with respect to managing stored digital images in a practical manner.